Game of Thrones Season 8 Spoilers, Release Date & What We Know

Game of Thrones Season 8 was announced by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff on March 12, 2017 and in June 2016, HBO programming president Casey Bloys announced Season 8 would be the hit show's last. The hit show is an adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire, George R. R. Martin's series of fantasy novels, the first of which is A Game of Thrones. It was recently announced the scripts for the episodes of Season 8 were completed and that the episodes are based off of the rough outlines from the unfinished books by George R. R. Martin. But when can we expect to see 8th season of Game of Thrones?

When is Game of Thrones Season 8 Coming Out?

It is not clear when Game of Thrones Season 8 will premiere at this time, but we do know when production for the series is going to start. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau recently sat down with Collider and revealed that Season 8 is will begin filming in October of 2017. If the show follows a similar path of past seasons, it would mean that filming would take about 6 months and finish in April of 2018. After editing and post production, we could expect to see a premiere in late 2018 or possibly even early 2019 and Casey Bloys has said that we could end up waiting 18 months before seeing the 8th Season of Game of Thrones.

How Many Episodes will There be in Season 8 of Game of Thrones?

Like the seventh season, Season 8 will be shorter than previous seasons, consisting of 6 episodes, due to the smaller amount of story content remaining, as well as the increased production values and time required to film episodes involving larger set pieces than in previous seasons. Game of Thrones Season 7 consisted of 7 episodes with many going over the traditional 60 minutes and many have speculated that Season 8 will feature even longer episodes. When asked about the length of the episodes at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Bloys spoke about whether the new episodes would be supersize. Bloys had this to say. "We haven't had that discussion yet because I don't know how long the episodes are gonna be. Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it's a great show, so who knows?"

What Will Happen in Season 8 of Game of Thrones?

This is obviously not clear at the moment, but like the sixth and seventh seasons, Game of Thrones Season 8 will be based on an outline of the two final, presently-unpublished novels in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. Bloys also confirmed that the scripts for the final season are finished and were written by showrunners DB Weiss and David Benioff. As the scripts already exist, it's not impossible that there could be an early leak, especially since hackers have stolen 1.5 terabytes of data from HBO. In November 2016, an anonymous Reddit user leaked details of the entire plot of season seven, in a post which has since proven to be largely accurate (one spoiler, for instance, predicted that Viserion would be killed and revived by the Night King).

How Many More Seasons of Game of Thrones are There Going to Be?

Season 8 will unfortunately be the final season of Game of Thrones. However, HBO has announced that they are working on four spinoffs for the hit fantasy series. In July, Bloys told reporters that any spinoff will premiere "at least a year" after the final season. There are only a few concrete details we do know about the spin-offs. It has been confirmed that writers Max Borenstein (Kong: Skull Island), Jane Goldman (Kingsman: The Golden Circle), Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential) and Carly Wray (Mad Man) have been brought on to write these shows, although it hasn't been confirmed if a fifth writer has come aboard for the latest. George R.R. Martin confirmed that none of these prequel shows will be based on his Dunk & Egg stories, a series of novellas that are set 100 years before the events of the books and TV series, following the adventures of the two title characters. Bloys thinks it would be unlikely that more than one of these shows eventually makes it to the HBO airwaves though.

How Important Is the Golden Company of Essos?

Towards the end of the Season 7 finale, Queen Cersei revealed in private to her brother/lover Jaime Lannister that she doesn't fully intend to help Daenerys and Jon Snow defeat the Night King and her army, stating that she ultimately wants their forces to be decimated before her own Lannister army could simply clean up the mess left behind. Since her army was essentially wiped out during attacks by Daenerys and her dragon, the Dothraki horde and the unsullied warriors, Cersei revealed to Jaime that she will be enlisting the help of The Golden Company of Essos. These are essentially warriors for hire, who are only loyal to the house that pays them the most. Armies like this could simply switch sides if their enemies paid them more, but that seems incredibly unlikely this will happen, since White Walkers possess no gold, and Dany and Jon aren't exactly known for their wealth. These mercenaries prefer to be called a brotherhood of exiles, unwanted men from all areas of Westeros, and interestingly enough, Jorah Mormont (Iain Glen) was once a part of The Golden Company, before he swore his allegiance to Daenerys Targaryen, so there could be a connection there if anyone from the Golden Company crosses pats with Jorah, who will presumably be up North throughout Season 8 alongside Dany, as they fight the Night King and his army of white walkers.

The Great War Will Finally Happen

Some fans may have been disappointed in Game of Thrones Season 7, since the Great War that was promised didn't actually happen, since many thought both of these shortened final two seasons would cover the entire war. Instead, fans got what ended up as a precursor to the Great War, with Queen Cersei striking first blood, by setting a trap for Daenerys' unsullied forces at Casterly Rock, with Euron Greyjoy and his Iron Fleet decimating the ships that Theon and Yara stole from him. The bulk of The Lannister army was instead sent to Highgarden to destroy what was left of House Tyrell and claim their gold, which was used to pay off the Crown's debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos, and ultimately to hire The Golden Company of Essos. The Great War will not be between Cersei and the kingdom's who oppose her though, it will in fact be between the Night King and his army of undead white walkers, and anyone who comes in their path. While Daenerys has her two remaining dragons (after the Night King took out Viserion with his icy javelin) and Jon Snow has the dragon glass mined from Dragonstone, the Night King has a much larger army of white walkers, plus a resurrected Viserion, who destroyed The Wall at Eastwatch, with the season ending with this massive army setting foot in Westeros for the first time ever, setting the stage for Game of Thrones to come to an epic conclusion.

Jon and Daenerys Will Finally Learn They're Related

While fans learned in the Season 6 finale that Jon Snow was in fact the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, and not the bastard of Ned Stark, we learned even more intriguing details this season, with Samwell Tarly (John Bradley) and Gilly (Hannah Murray) discovering a diary that reveals Rhaegar had his first marriage annulled, so he could marry Lyanna in a secret ceremony in Dorne. While Jon was thought to be a bastard of these two, Bran Stark (Isaac Hempstead Wright) saw this ceremony through a greensight vision, and it was finally revealed that his real name is actually Aegon Targaryen, the only true heir to the Iron Throne, and a legitimate member of both the Stark and Targaryen houses. We find this out in the same episode that Jon and Daenerys make love for the first time, although they don't know that they're actually related, with Daenerys being Jon's aunt. What's even more interesting that, even though Jon has bent the knee for Dany, he is actually the true heir, a fact that he will most likely find out at some point in Season 8, when he returns to the North to fight the Night King.

Yara Greyjoy's Fate Will Be Revealed

The Season 7 finale finally brought redemption for the cowardly Theon Greyjoy, as he rallied his Iron born men to save his sister Yara Greyjoy from the clutches of their uncle, Euron Greyjoy. In the Season 7 finale, Euron proclaimed to Theon that he has Yara alive, and he must pledge his loyalty to him, although this was before the wight was revealed, which caused Euron to take his fleet back to the Iron Islands because the white walkers are the only thing he's seen in this world that truly terrifies him. While many of the Iron born think Yara is really dead, Theon engages in hand to hand combat with one of his own men, barely defeating him before rallying the rest of the Iron born to save his sister. It certainly could be true that Yara was killed right away, but we won't know for sure until Season 8 debuts.

The Cleganebowl May Still Happen

While it certainly wasn't the confrontation most fans had hoped for, both the Clegane brothers, Sandor "The Hound" Clegane and Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane finally met face to (masked) face one again in the Season 7 finale, before the meeting in the dragon pit got under way. While Sandor had some words for his brother, the Mountain didn't say a word, although it's clear Sandor believes that his real brother is still alive somewhere within all of that armor. Still, many believe that Sandor will finally kill Gregor, for all of the pain Gregor has caused him, since his scarred face was a result of Gregor pushing him into a fire. Fans have long dubbed this supposed fight/confrontation as the CleganeBowl, and the brief meeting in the Season 7 finale may have finally set the table for this epic fight to happen once and for all.